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You do the math:
There are 566 municipalities and 566 Mayors in
New Jersey.
There are 611 school districts.
Why the overlapping overloads of costly school
districts that have put the
Garden State in first place as having the highest
property taxes in America?
Because of hypocritical, educational politics. Too
many school districts. Too many superintendents and
assistant superintendents and Boards of Education
costing property taxpayers tens of millions of dollars
a year of unnecessary expenditures.
New Jersey also claims the bragging rights for having
the costliest per public school pupil at $8,500 for
nine months of schooling.
Never forget, taxpayers: IT’S YOUR MONEY!
How did this ghastly runaway train of expensive public
education come about?
It goes back to
October 4, 1957
when the communist
Soviet Union, in a race-to-outer-space, launched the
first man-made orbiting satellite named “Sputnik.”
America, the world’s greatest post-World War II
“superpower,” was embarrassed by this astronomical
feat. America and its supreme technological advances
in the 1950s – what with the Atom Bomb and thousands
of nuclear missiles in the U.S. and scattered around
the globe on U.S. military bases – was thought to be
years ahead of the sluggish “Evil Empire.”
Thus began the creation of regional high schools in
the
United States.
Each regional high school became a “school district.”
The agenda was to beat the Soviet Union by emphasizing
math and science in the regional high schools.
When President John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, he
raised the bar by declaring that the
United States would have “a man on the moon” by the
end of the decade. Kennedy’s inspirational vision was
realized when Astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first
human steps on the moon in 1969.
New Jersey taxpayers, of course, stepped up to the
plate with plenty of money (in the billions of
dollars), by raising property taxes to support 611
school districts.
New Jersey also holds the record as being the State
with the “highest cost-of-living.”
Despite the billions of dollars pouring into the State
Treasury every year,
New Jersey no longer can balance its budget. Governor
Jon Corzine’s first fiscal act was to increase the
State’s budget from $29 billion last year to $31
billion this year.
Needless to say, more and more residents and
businesses are leaving
New Jersey
in recent years to neighboring states with much lower
property taxes, housing costs, educational costs and
auto insurance coverage.
New Jersey, not Massachusetts, now has the distinction
of being known as “TaxaJoisey,” the latest mocking jab
at our colonial State.
Municipal school budgets today can range from 55 to 80
percent of our property taxes.
Where’s the “Tax Revolt” like the one our founding
fathers declared in the 1776 American Revolution?
Rather than fight, taxpayers are heading south where
government is much cheaper than
New Jersey’s State, County and Municipal governments.
Unless
New Jersey voters and taxpayers change our wasteful
government ways, we will continue to pay more and work
more to live in the once affordable and grand Garden
State.
And it can begin with shrinking school districts and
“sharing public services” among bordering towns, which
Fair Haven, Little Silver and Rumson are beginning to
do in
Monmouth County.
Merging police, fire and infrastructure costs will be
the best way to begin lowering property taxes.
Go for it,
Jersey politicians, or get out of office! |
